Are creationists ignorant, stupid, or both?

Question

Evolution does exist, and to say it does not shows tremendous ignorance to scientific evidence. Not only does it exist, but after a general understanding of genetics and simple reasoning, it's obvious. Not only is it obvious, but evidence in the form of fossils, comparitive anatomy, embriology, etc is overwhelming. It is "only a theory," but so is all of science, and a theory is HEAVILY BACKED explanation that has withstood time. Evolution is FACT among the scientific community, who do a poor job of communicating to the general public.

I have nothing against Christianity. But just because a book says everything was created in six days does not mean it was literally created in six days. And evolution does not oppose religion.

So my questions is why. Why do so many people (more than half of Americans) disagree with evolution, and embrace its pseudoscience alternatives - creationism and Intelligent Design? Are they stupid, or have they been poorly educated about the topic?

First off, ignorance and stupidity are not the same thing. Ignorance is lacking knowledge (education), whereas stupidity is lacking intelligence.

Of course you do not see macroevolution at play, because it takes a tremendous amount of time. If you want a current example of evolution, however, look no further than bacteria. Why do you think new antibiotics must constantly be made? Because the bacteria immune to it live and therefore reproduce more than the other bacteria. Your result is a population who is now almost entirely immune to the antibiotics.

Answer 1

Of course to answer your main question, there are some Creationists who fall into each of those categories, just as there are some Evolutionists who do.

The majority of Creationists do not disagree that there are forces of microevolution at work, it is macroevolution that is what we disagree with. I am not ignorant on this subject. I study anthropology/human evolution (and recently graduated with a Bachelor of Science with Honors in Anthropological Sciences) and have learned much on the topic before siding more heavily on this Creationist side of things. I am not stupid, because I have put quite a lot of thought into what I believe and why I believe it. It is possible that macroevolution is a fact (don't they say anything is possible?), but it is not something I place faith in. (By the way, having faith in something you've never seen is the definition of religion, so evolution is your religion because you've never seen it at work.)

Scientific evidence does not lend itself to the theory of evolution as readily as you may think. If you read Hutton and Lyell, you will see that their original observations for the geologic column was largely based on circular logic. Today, I constantly see examples of emotions overtaking science in my evolution classes. When a professor finds a creature that doesn't fit the theory of evolution, they just throw it out of reckoning. But the science I was taught says that you have to look at things objectively and take new evidence into account. If you have a primate that doesn't fit inside the evolutionary tree you can't just rule it out - it existed!

Evolution is not obivous, additionally. If it were obvious, scientists thousands of years ago would have said something about it. It wouldn't have taken until fifty years after Darwin published On the Origin of Species for the theory to take root in Western society.

Some Creationists don't believe that "six days" is literal, as well. But that doesn't mean we don't believe God created each species individually. Which is another thing. Comparative embryology does not yield only one interpretation. Of course I cannot prove that what I believe is true, but neither can you. Comparative embryology could show evidence of macroevolution; it could also show evidence of a sort of maker's mark.

You also mentioned "look at bacteria". My fiance is a microbiologist and works in a lab full of scientists studying bacteria and other microorganisms. Working with these organisms has not shown them evidence of macroevolution - merely microevolution at work. Specifically the example you gave (antibiotic immunity) is microevolution - the bacteria have not become a new species. Astoundingly, this work has brought a great number of scientists closer to God when they realize exactly how unlikely it was that flagellae developed on a paramecium, let alone complex organs like an eye (speaking of which, researchers have yet to hypothesize how intermediate forms of the eye would have positively contributed to the fitness of a developing species).

So in conclusion, my real answer to your question is that it is not necessarily the Creationists who are ignorant - it is the self-proclaimed "intelligent" who ignorantly bash the beliefs of others without pausing to think that maybe their own personal beliefs had been shoved down their throats since childhood as much as they believed Christianity has to Creationists.

Answer 2

What is stupid is to entirely dismiss a belief system out of hand, simply because you do not share it. Just because the people who believe in creationism and science are at odds does not mean that what they believe has to be mutually exclusive. Another way to look at it is this: Isn't it possible that science is simply the study of how God gets things done?
To be true, the Bible does not have to include all the information in the universe. That's ridiculous. It was written to provide certain information in an understandable format, to the widest possible variety of people. That would eliminate a DNA section, for example.
And science, by definition, begins with a theory and then tries to prove it. Evolution is a theory. Its existence may be proven, but the fact that mankind evolved from an ape has not been proven.
Science changes every day. We disprove an old theory with new evidence, and a new theory appears. And the more we learn, the more we should realize how very little we do know, for sure. It is reasonable to believe that science has some things right, and others wrong. It is also reasonable to believe that we may not always interpret the information in the Bible as it was intended. It is important to understand the context for every story, not just the words. A small reference to a common custom, for example, may have been understood by everyone then, and no one now. Which can mean we misunderstand, or just miss, important points.
So my point is, unless you have a complete, well-informed working knowledge of any issue, you should NOT assume that yours is the only possible intelligent opinion. Keep an open mind, never stop learning, and have the courtesy to respect the beliefs of others. Do you want any less for yourself?

Answer 3

Neither; not for most creationists anyway. But a person might be stupid
and/or unlearned to think that they are. Do not underestimate the enemy.
To underestimate the enemy is to be destroyed.

Creationism is primarily caused by the psychological desire to disrupt
fundamental truth in one's mind, particularly the truth of naturalism.
The desire to disrupt fundamental truth is a crude blind mental focus.
That desire can often even be seen in the facial expressions and tone
of voice of the people that have it.

The desire to disrupt fundamental truth, as well as the opposite desire
to seek fundamental truth, are mostly the result of the genes. Those genes,
in turn, are the result of the evolutionary psychological effects of particular
environments. Notice the physical racial traits of creationists and
evolutionists. Among the europeans, the creationists are more often of the
indigenous west-european types, whereas the evolutionists are more often
of the original inland types, which migrated west and hybridized with the
indigenous people. For example, compare Jerry Falwell and Richard Dawkins
side-by-side.

Despite the fact that the genes are the atheist evolutionist explanation for
character traits, the creationists act much more like atheist evolutionists
than do the atheist evolutionists themselves. Why? Because the creationists
are breeding at a very high rate, whereas the atheist evolutionists make
comparatively few offspring. If both sides were not utter hypocrits, then the
opposite would be happening.

Answer 4

I go with willfully ignorant. The main argument I see against evolution is always "But you never see one animal give birth to a different type of animal!", but that's not how it works.

It's a slow GENETIC LEVEL change over time.

EXAMPLE: If your cat gives birth to kittens that are slightly quicker than their mother, do you say that those kittens are a different animal? No, you'd say you have cats that deviate slightly from the average in terms of their speed. If, after thousands of years, those fast cats continue to breed only with other fast cats,(let's say you took your kittens and dropped them off in the middle of nowhere) you may end up with a seperate species of quick, highly muscled cats that are better at catching prey, and maybe have other changes that weren't even seen in the founding litter. But if you look at the original animal with the mutation, there usually isn't a very noticiable change from its parent. It's a SLOW change over LOTS of time. There's never going to be a primate giving birth to a full human, but primates are going to be adapting to their environment one TINY step at a time.

You have to look at the ancestral evidence and fossils as snapshots taken over a species existance, not static points that jump from one straight to the next. Look at your own photo album. Did you one day look like a 4 month old, then look like a 16 year old the next week?

It takes more time than a single person has to live to observe macroevolution by natural selection. You can see a similar effect through the artificial selection of animal breeding done by humans to get certain traits. Two purebreed Rottweilers probably aren't going to give birth to a chihuahua. But they're both a sub-species of wolves that humans brought about. They aren't seperate species yet because we can use artificial means to let them breed, but if you go by some of the definitions of species (physical ability to breed and create viable offspring), they might be considered seperate if they had both been found in the wild. A male Chi. couldn't mount a female Rott, and a female Chi. couldn't carry a Rott's pups to term even if they mated succesfully.

Anyway, sorry about the rant.

Answer 5

Because peoples seek answers to their questions that they can understand or support... Evolution is a difficult concept to master and study, so it is much easier to have faith than understanding a concept... So I should say that peoples are not ignorant, but lazy, so they just don't want to spent the time needed to really understand a concept such as evolution, when in the bible, it says something easier to understand.
We lived in a calculator world, and I believed people still prefer big package deals, when it comes to answer such existential questions...

Answer 6

I am a Christian and was public school educated too. I used to believe that evolution could have been how God created the universe.I do not believe that but the reasons why would take much too long for me to write as slow as I type.If you really want to know why creationists believe the way they do watch some creation videos.There is a web site called www.freecreationvideos.com. There are some better videos like Unlocking The Mysteries of Life. Take a look you may not change your views but you just might figure out that you've been lied to.Check into it. God bless!!!

Answer 7

AH come on! That question cannot be answered. It will vary from person to person. Yes,evolution is heavily backed, but that's what faith is- FAITH because you may not always have palpable evidence that humans arent alone and yet people believe. There are two types of people. People who need to be able to see and touch evidence to believe and those who feel it in their vertebrae when they know something cant just be a coincidence. The real question is what person are YOU? Well ,that my two cents. =)

Answer 8

Though I might generally agree with your mini-thesis relative to evolution v creationism, you seem to be rather dogmatic in your stance and wish to deal with FACTS...........so tell me where you come up with FACTS that more than half of all Americans disagree with evolution? No hedging, hemming or hawing, show us your validated facts which support this declaration.
And tell us when theory transformed into fact? Have you found a dictionary or any scientific journal which describes Darwin's theory as factual or is it still Darwin's Theory? Or did you discover that theory evolved genetically to become fact?

Have you personally seen or have knowledge of watching one species actually give birth to another? When and where?

When you're able to satisfactorily answer, without equivocation, the above questions, then you're really no further ahead of anyone else who attempts to sell creation theory as fact or Darwinism as fact, are you?

Perhaps the concepts of creationism are merely symbolic references that were implemented to explain the unexplainable at a time when you hadn't been around to tell us all what's absolute and what's not.

I look forward to seeing you receiving your Nobel Prize, but you'll have to answer these questions before proceeding further.

.

Answer 9

Well, both exist together.
Evolution is to CONVINCE the naked eye that things develop in a logical fashion.
In essense, creationism is invisible (and thus thought to be unknowable, but intuited), but evolution is visible.

So, when the two schools of thought disagree, they are liable to pick a side and ignore the other.
But in truth both exist, you just need to reconcile them both with reason.

Answer 10

The answer to your question is Yes. Unlike most scientific theories, evolution is provable and I have done so; details on request. (Please provide an e-mail address.) This does not speak well for the state of education in the US.